Tag Archive for: Email Marketing Campaigns

Non-profit Marketing

Non-profit Marketing – Who’s paying attention to that?

Generally speaking, non-profits are run by valuable volunteers in their spare time. They coordinate events, run fundraising campaigns, collect membership information and dues, all in support of their mission.

Who is responsible for your non-profit marketing when you promote your organization as a whole to your local community, nationally or internationally?

Hopefully, you have a volunteer who is well versed in creating websites with keywords so you can be found in search engine results. Someone who understands the value of “the list” for your email marketing campaigns and donation campaigns. And I hope you have a system in place to house all of your contacts and donor information so you can easily reach out to a subset of your membership for a specific need and share those contacts with your leadership team.

If you don’t have a volunteer on your team with true non-profit marketing experience, it might be worth hiring me to take a look at what you are doing and offer some advice. I have many tools in my toolbox that might help you get more organized and more focused, which leads to better results for your team emotionally as well as financially.

No one wants their volunteers to feel burnt-out, but if you ask them to do too much or pile on projects that are beyond their skillset, they start to leave. They resign from their leadership roles and eventually don’t renew their dues or make other financial contributions to your organization. That can be prevented if your group is organized and efficient with the time that volunteers dedicate to your non-profit.

I can help set up systems for your non-profit. I can create instructions and train your volunteers to manage it moving forward. I can help with any major website updates you need in the future.

I work on an hourly basis, so you only pay me for work I perform for you, when you need it. I have worked with several non-profit organizations to get them on track for better success and better relationships among their leadership team and their valued volunteers.

Give me a call if your group could use a boost for your non-profit marketing or organizing your group to be more efficient. I’m happy to help!

“Michelle has been a great help with transitioning to our new website through MembershipWorks. She worked with our leadership panel, was responsive via email, phone and video chat to all of our varied questions, and was very willing to offer her expertise. Michelle provided us with multiple training aids, videos, and step-by-step guides for those of us who are new to managing website. We had a successful, on-time launch of our new website and are very grateful for her assistance.” – Sue Bohnsack, Eden Prairie Professional in Aging

Connect with me!

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Email Marketing vs Social Media to Capture Clients

What do Unilever, Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Lush have in common?

In 2020 or 2021 they put their social media advertising on pause to take a stand against hate speech and misinformation. More recently Facebook has been under fire for it’s business practices leading some companies to close their accounts with the social media giant or pause making any posts or buying ads.

That leads me to ask you, what would happen if you decided not to use any social media accounts? How would you communicate with your clients and customers? Every company has to review their own values and the values of the providers they choose to support and then make an educated decision.

When you use social media accounts, you really haven’t captured your audience because if the platform goes away, where’s your client list? Your database of your customers, followers and prospective customers? It’s lost.

Consider Adding or Strengthening your Email Campaign System

My recommend is to look again at email marketing vs social media. Look at your email database. I always recommend businesses and nonprofits use a third party email provider so you can comply with CAN SPAM laws and allow followers to unsubscribe at any time. I am most familiar with MailChimp and Constant Contact, but there are many email providers and lots of blog posts comparing them on the Internet.

If you don’t have an account with a third party provider, I suggest you start researching which one that will fit your needs and your budget as well as integrate with your website. Many times I put a button (or link) on a client’s website so anyone on their website can subscribe to their emails (capturing your prospects). To entice people to subscribe, you can offer a free gift like a PDF with tips, educational information, fun facts, do’s and don’ts list, whatever you think would be meaningful to your audience. When they subscribe, they get your free offer automatically.

When you have captured your client’s email address, you have it. You can always download your email list and upload it to another provider. They key is, it doesn’t go away like your social media followers could. In fact, your emails stay in your client’s inbox until they read them, whereas posts may be off their radar in just a few hours as they slide down their social media feed.

Something to consider

I just wanted to share this idea with you as something to consider for your nonprofit or business. If you already have a system set up, great! Take some time to review it and make sure you are keeping your subscriber list up-to-date. If you don’t have a platform to manage your email campaigns, consider adding one in December so you can hit the ground running in 2022 and share your message with your clients, customers and prospects.

As always, if you would like some help getting this implemented and integrated with your website, let me know. We can import email addresses from a database if you have one, even if that’s just your accounting software. You have to start somewhere!

Here’s a link to the Resource page on my website. I provide a little more info about MailChimp and Constant Contact and explain how they are different, costs, etc.

https://growyourmindshare.com/resources

Reach out to me with your email marketing vs social media questions!

Michelle Aspelin
Mindshare Marketing & Implementation Services LLC

P.S. If you have a membership you manage and you want a system to make it easier, I recommend MembershipWorks.com. And if you have MembershipWorks integrated with your WordPress or Squarespace website, I can connect it to MailChimp so your new members will automatically get added to your MailChimp list. No extra work. Automating the process makes it easier for volunteers who run the many nonprofits I support with MembershipWorks.

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Open Rate and Click Rate Tips from Constant Contact Webinar

Constant Contact logo

Hello! I attended a webinar from Constant Contact and I want to share the tips they offered with you. The data they compiled is from ALL of their customers, covering ALL industries. Keep in mind, the best practices for your specific industry may vary from these recommendations. The webinar was called The Art and Science of a Great Email.

How to increase OPEN RATES:

Keep subject lines to 50 characters or less, about 5-7 words. Sometimes subjects like “December Newsletter” will work for your subscribers. Or you might want to get more creative and use something like “December Must Read Highlights” or “What to know from XXX for the month of December”.

Highest amount of OPENS occurs for emails sent between 6-7AM on Monday mornings. The open rate declines as the week progresses.

How many emails should you send a MONTH? 1-20. After 2 or more, the open rate decreases. More emails = less opens.

Keep in mind, this information was from ALL Constant Contact customers across ALL industries. Some of these practices I agree with 100%, others I think are open to more flexibility. I will however, go back and review the results I’ve been getting for myself and for my clients and see how they compare to these recommendations based on their statistics.

How to STRUCTURE your email:

Communicate with images, 2-3 seems best, too many gets distracting, unless your industry demands it like food images for restaurants or property images for real estate.

20 lines of text between images offers the best click-through rate. Avoid very lengthy text. My recommendation, if you need to share a longer document or article, consider putting just the first paragraph or two in the email, then create a READ MORE button that brings the user to the rest of the information that has been posted on your website or blog (recommended) or elsewhere.

Fonts? Best results were when one single font was used but up to 4 is ok. More than that drastically reduces your clicks and your email starts to look like spam, not good.

Colors? Stick to colors of your brand, up to 4 is ok, not including color photos of course.

Use emphasis carefully, like if you have a quote, about 15 words or less is best. Not too many different styles like ALL CAPS, italic, bold, etc. Again could start to look like spam.

Click Rate vs # of Links:

The more LINKS you have, the more CLICKS you will get, right? Not so, according to the statistics. If you offer too many links, subscribers will ignore the majority of them and only click on a few.

1-3 links are best. More links = less clicks/link.

Determine Your Super Fans:

I use the term “raving fans” frequently in marketing. They are your clients or customers who LOVE you and they talk about you frequently across all media and word of mouth. Hopefully you know who your raving fans are. If not, Constant Contact recommends you review WHO is opening your emails and treat those Super Fans to something special.

You can identify WHO opens your emails and do a variety of things. Look at the Reports section of your account, view who opened a particular email. You can COPY those contacts into a new list called something like OPENERS or Super Fans. Do that for the last few emails you sent. It won’t duplicate them if the subscriber opened all of your emails. Let me know if you want help with this.

Once you have a new list of your Super Fans, determine what you can do to make them feel special. Maybe send your next email to them earlier than the others. Maybe send a special version with a coupon or other thank you gift (time is a gift too, not just products). Or simply send them a Thank You email for being so engaged with your campaigns.

Did you know that 5% of your email subscribers are responsible for 38% of your opens? And 10% of your subscribers open 51% of your emails. So that top 10% is very important to you, treat them as important in various ways a couple times a year or more.

In review, here are the tips from Constant Contact for the IDEAL EMAIL:

  1. Send at the best target time and day of the week. Monday 6-7AM.
  2. Use a short subject line. 50 characters or less.
  3. Use your brand colors. Up to 4.
  4. Communicate through pictures, up to 3.
  5. Minimize the number of links to 3.
  6. Avoid lengthy articles or copy.
  7. Find your Super Fans and treat them well.

You might also find value in my post about social media vs email marketing.

Review offered by Michelle Aspelin
Mindshare Marketing & Implementation Services LLC
Call or email me with your questions.
952-484-6015  email Michelle or visit my Contact page for other options.

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